I walked past countless booths of seemingly popular franchises that I neither recognized nor were there any English titles involved. Having said that, I did glance at a couple of the more popular titles that we WOULD be seeing in the States, many of which appeared to also be the most popular amongst the Japanese crowd (cough, Metal Gear Solid 4, cough).

As mentioned in a previous musing of mine, the first game that I played at TGS was Halo 3. By the time you read this you'll probably know for yourself, this game rocks. The bubble shield was fun as hell, but very hard to get used to. It will probably take the 7331 gamers out there about 2 seconds to add this item to their Team Deathmatch arsenal, but I could not get the hang of it in a 10 minute session. The 4 player co-op campaign mode looks like it is going to be awesome, but I would suggest ostracizing any players you know of that lag. Of course my connection was perfect in the professionally set-up booth. Some of the new vehicles are wicked cool, and the controls are spot on. One major change is the use of the 'Right Bumper' to pick up weapons and board vehicles, but it freed up some other functionality in the main buttons. Graphics were stunning as were to be expected. The well-known Halo theme translates well to the next generation.

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Over at Capcom, I know this guy named Damien who always talks about how depressed his father is. It turns out that the Devil May Cry sometimes. Lamest intro ever? Probably so. Devil May Cry 4 looks to be everything that fans of the previous three incarnations could expect only crisper, bloodier, and more kill-tastic than ever. The steep learning curve of the series prevented me from going hands on, but I'm sure the fanboys out there will NOT be disappointed when this title hits the shelves.

What can I say about Assassin’s Creed. I have three words: beautiful, beautiful, and beautiful. Ubisoft had this title behind closed doors at the Microsoft booth for the Xbox 360, but was suspiciously absent from the Sony booth. Although I could not find someone to tell me about it in decent English, the looks were enough to convince that this game will be a contender. I'm told that the story is pretty unique and amazing, so we'll be sure to look out for this one.

Also over at Capcom decided to take the Wii Sports Golf game a step further with We (Wii) Love Golf! I'm not sure if this title will be hitting stateside, but its Japanese cuteness combined with the innovative and simple use of the Wiimote promises to make it THE game for the golf simulation fans out there. The Wiimote is in fact about infinity times better than the familiar trackball of the Golden Tee line of games. Games that let you play 18 holes without ever leaving your home have my vote of confidence. Fore!

I saw Lord of the Rings Online out on the floor somewhere. Didn't I play this game at E3 2006? How can we be even more untimely with our releases?

Mobile gaming, once again, is very important to the Japanese based on the amount of booth space I saw dedicated to cell phone games, but not so important to me. There were some great booth babes at the mobile booths though. I apologize for not taking more booth babe photos, but I needed a sidekick to take pictures with ME in them. Otherwise it's just another photo you can grab elsewhere on the Internet.

Okay, I know the most important game to a lot of you is Metal Gear Solid 4. I'm not a fan of the series. I liked it on the NES, but haven't kept up. This is another of those games that is so hard that I stand no chance at doing anything other than making a fool of myself if I played it. Luckily, I was able to interview a fellow American - who I will refer to as Scott - about his experience with the game. I was able to see for myself that it was very pretty as all games should be with the latest generation of hardware. He had three major complaints. According to Scott, the stealth aspect has taken a backseat to shooting. The AI also appeared to be quite poor to him (which of course may be improved before release). Finally, he is flabbergasted that Konami has not addressed past complaints about the camera angle. I had to take his word for it.

So, I didn't play that many games, but you try to cover an event with 180,000 Japanese teenagers running around! At E3, I was able to use my physical size and brute force to forge a path through the massive throngs of fanboys. This just wasn't possible here, both because of my respect for the Japanese people and there unwillingness to yield when you stand between them and their favorite titles!